What is Love? Love for the sake of Allah
What is love? Love, according to the Oxford dictionary is, “a strong feeling of affection.” If this definition is analysed, love could be many things; love could be desire or love could be lust. To go more in depth, love can be of many types; love for yourself, love for objects, love for desire, motherly love and the list goes on and on. Today’s topic of discussion is in fact the greatest type of love, love for the sake of Allah.
Love for the sake of Allah is without a doubt the strongest type of love. This is due to the fact that love itself can only exist, as long as the reason to love exists. For example, a man in love with the beauty of his wife will only love her as long as her beauty exists. If she loses her beauty due to old age or any other reason, his love for her diminishes. Whereas love for the sake of Allah, can never diminish as Allah himself is the ever-existing, the ever-living.
Now the question arises, why should I love for the sake of Allah? What’s wrong with just loving? Well there are numerous narrations of the prophet (peace be upon him) and verses in the Quran which speak about the virtues of those who love each other for the sake of Allah.
Hadith #1
[quotes]Anas reported that the Prophet (peace be upon him) “Anyone who possesses three attributes will experience the sweetness of belief: that he loves Allah and His Messenger more than anything else; that he loves someone for the sake of Allah alone; and that he hates the idea of reverting to disbelief as much as he would hate being thrown into a fire.” [Agreed upon][/quotes]
Hadith # 2
[quotes]Mu’adh said, “I heard the Messenger of Allah, May Allah bless him and grant him peace, say, ‘Allah, the Mighty and Exalted, says, “Those who love one another for My majesty will have minbars of lights. The Prophets and martyrs will envy them.”‘” [at-Tirmidhi][/quotes]
After reading these two narrations of our holy prophet (peace be upon him) it shows that this type of love is held very high in our religion and even the prophets and martyrs will be jealous of it. Now that we know what the strongest type of love is and its virtue, how do we love for the sake of Allah?
Loving for the sake of Allah means to love for someone what Allah loves, and hate for them all that Allah hates. This means to enjoin good and forbid them from evil. Making them the best Muslim they can be and securing your future in paradise with them.
As Muslims, paradise is our ultimate abode and getting there is what we strive for. Let’s start with loving for the sake of Allah because surely that is the ultimate form of love. We make du’aa that Allah unites us with our loved ones in Paradise. Ameen.
